#indignados: The movement is still alive

[This is the last post from a series of four on the indignados movement in Spain in May and June 2011. To start from the beginning, click here and start reading at the bottom of the page]

The big Loreal ad is now naked... Protests have come to an end in Madrid's Puerta del Sol.

More than one month after the seeding rally on May, with the resulting four-week long camps now dismantled; after several crashes with the police, an election massively won by conservatives and, most importantly, several points of division among supporters, nobody could really know how the defiant 15M movement health status was.

But today it has been proved that it’s at it best. With rallies called at some 60 cities across Spain (Madrid has held six on its own!) some 350,000 indignados (“indignants”), as they are known after a book by Stéphane Hessel, have taken the streets. As usual, demands are focused on the cuts in social spending that governments are applying in an attempt to reduce the deficit caused by the rescuing of banks in 2008.

Attempts by conservative media to discredit the movement have been carried out to no avail, as users of social media sites have been quick to respond. The newspaper “La Gaceta” always use the word “illegal” after “indignants”, others argue that demos are only being held because of the socialist defeat at the past elections, and others claim that protesters are in close relation to Basque terrorists. However, pacifism is one of the key points of the movement and, despite the size of the crowd, no violent episodes whatsoever have been registered today.

Indeed, political parties and traditional media don’t know how to handle a situation that is totally out of their control and that they don’t fully comprehend. We are facing a true revolution, a step forward in history that is being determined by the spread of new technologies and that will lead to a purer, more participative form of democracy.